SABMiller makes high beer sales in Asia, Africa

Brewing giant SABMiller is expected to report on Tuesday a 1.6 percent rise in volume sales in the last three months, as strong growth in Africa and Asia offset a fall in Colombia, hit by the heaviest rains for 50 years.

The London-based brewer of Miller Lite, Peroni and Grolsch is also expected to say in a trading statement that beer price rises boosted revenue growth in the period, its fiscal third quarter, which is heavily dependent on summer beer drinking in South Africa and Latin America.

The company, which earns over 80 percent of its profits in emerging markets including Colombia, South Africa, Poland and China, is seeing a recovery in many of these while mature markets are held back as high unemployment hits beer drinking.

Growth in Asia has been led by strong sales in the world’s biggest beer market, China, and in Africa by South Africa, Mozambique and Angola, while volume falls are seen in other regions such as Latin America, Europe and North America.

Analysts are on average expecting underlying growth of 1.6 percent in beer volumes in the quarter after the group showed a 1 percent rise in the six months to end-September, according to a Reuters poll of 10 brokers.

The second largest brewer in the world after Anheuser-Busch InBev, SABMiller has said it expects to benefit from lower raw material prices such as for barley to the end of its March 2011 financial year and then see a small rise the following year as higher grain prices start to feed through.

Source: Reuters